And every time, it's because of the responsibility of taking out a gallbladder.
Here's a quick science talk: There are two structures that have to be cut in order to remove the gallbladder—the cystic artery and the cystic duct.
And if you do it wrong, it could be devastating for the patient.
I'm a good surgeon, I know my anatomy, but every single time I do it, this feeling of dread will just come up, and it wasn't until several years later when I looked back that I recognized that as anxiety.
This is why it's important for me to remember that everything comes down to belief.
I heard this first from Jack Canfield: "Fear is just false events, appearing real."
We only have a couple of fears like the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Other than that, everything else is manufactured because of beliefs that we created as we grew up, like failure.
The mindset of being able to fail forward is a foreign concept to a surgeon.
And when I started the Menopause Movement, I really had to work hard to undo all those beliefs around failure because you don't start a business without failing it forward. You've got to test things, you're going to fail and then you have to tweak things.
But when you think about how we live inside of a box, and how our growth is outside of it, as we step out, the cycle continues. Failing forward is the way to go.
Anxiety is a very disruptive condition and can increase during menopause, but there's a way to overcome it and I talk more about that in today's episode of The Best of The Menopause Movement Podcast with Vikki Yaffe.
Vikki is a coach who helps ambitious people manage anxiety and procrastination so they can get more done in half the time. She's the host of the Hack Your Time podcast (previously F*ck Anxiety and Get Sh*t Done).
During our conversation, we talk about the definition of anxiety, why we evolved to have anxiety, where anxiety comes from PLUS: